L'Egisto, ovvero Chi soffre speri ('Egisto, or Who suffers may hope') is a 1637 commedia musicale, a type of early Italian comic opera, in a prologue and three acts with music by Virgilio Mazzocchi (and, in its 1639 revision, Marco Marazzoli) and a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi (the future Pope Clement IX), based on Giovanni Boccaccio's Il decamerone (Fifth day, ninth tale).
[4] A revised version, a collaboration with (and with intermedi composed by) Marco Marazzoli, was performed on 27 February 1639 at the nearby Teatro Barberini, with the title L'Egisto, ovvero Chi soffre speri,[1] and repeated at least four times.
[6] Nestola suggests that the opera was performed a few days after Antonio Barberini arrived in Paris, after he and his family fled Rome subsequent to the death of Pope Urban VIII.
[10] The librettist added to the Boccaccio story an "allegorical framework",[3] made explicit in the prologue with roles for Otio (“Idleness”), Voluttà ("Voluptuousness") and Virtù (“Virtue”).
[1] In the 1639 revision, comic characters dominate the first two intermedi, particularly the second, La fiera di Farfa, which is essentially a scenic madrigal for ten voices that depicts shopkeepers selling their wares.